Lomography

La Puebla de Arganzón- Sunflowers Mean No Nuclear Place!
written by disdis on July 26th, 2009 , 5 comments (2 votes)

Please activate JavaScript to see this gallery.

Alava is a no nuclear region. That is shown in a signal when you arrive in Vitoria. But why and how is it possible? Mainly because we have wind, we have sun (sometimes) and because of sunflowers. There is a nuclear power plant in the region of Burgos, but 64 km south of Vitoria now quite famous because it’s should be closed this year and now the closing is delayed to 2011. It’s now one of the main news in Spain. You can find more information here: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/greenpeace-celebrates-victory.

Before the main product of the country side was potatoes. I know potatoes are not the most luxury products but everybody likes them, don’t you? Now, the competition of other regions and countries has made agricultors work in another different way. They put windmills for wind power and sunflowers for biofuel, which is defined as solid, liquid or gaseous fuel obtained from relatively recently lifeless or living biological material and is different from fossil fuels, which are derived from long dead biological material. Also, various plants and plant-derived materials are used for biofuel manufacturing, such as sunflowers. That’s why the potatoes plantations now are being changed to sunflowers fiels. Of course, I like better sunflowers fields. They look colourful, and those flowers are soooo… strange, They seem to be someone on the beach changing the position of the towel in order to be on the direction of the sun. All the region is full of fields like this but I love one 30 km more or less going south of Vitoria. Maybe because it’s near my mother’s place of birth , or maybe because of the great contrast it makes with the old industrial area.

Just in front of a sunflowers fields you can find a tractor cemetery which is a contradiction and a place called “El Enclave”, a road stop that seems to be still living in the 50’s. The sunflowers are the beauty, the tractors the beast and “El Enclave” the place for the final duel between past and future. I love this place to take pictures.